is barely moving, and there’s so much blood, there’s so much blood, and it doesn’t matter that he knows the words, all the words, for everything. The numbers are taking her away. He can’t reach them without her.
“I can’t do this alone. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
He leans in until his lips brush the seashell curve of her ear. There’s blood in her hair, turning it tacky and clinging. It sticks to his skin, and he doesn’t try to wipe it off.
“Dodger,” he whispers. “Don’t die. This is an order. This is a command. This is an adjuration. Do whatever you have to do, break whatever you have to break, but don’t you die. This is an order. This is—”
This is her eyes opening, pupils reduced to black pinpricks against the gray of her irises, until she looks like she’s suffered a massive opiate overdose. This is gold sparking in the gray, brief and bright, as the Impossible City tries to call her home. He feels the gold in his own bones respond, reaching for the gold in Dodger’s, yearning to reunite.
This is the sound of gunfire going silent. Not tapering off; just stopping, like the world has been muted.
This is the world going white.
This is the end.
We got it wrong we got it wrong we got it wrong we got it wrong we
In the same ordinary town, on the same ordinary street, lived two ordinary children who had never quite managed to cross paths. This, too, was sadly ordinary, for the line that divided the students who went to the school on the west side of town from the students who went to school on the east side of town ran right down the middle of their block, an invisible barrier that had split them in two before they were old enough to notice. Every morning they got out of bed, put on their clothes, kissed their parents goodbye, and walked off down their ordinary street, through their ordinary town, in two ordinary, opposite directions.
The two children were very much alike and very different at the same time, as children so often are. One was named Hephzibah, because her parents had a languid and eccentric way of looking at the world. They called her “Zib,” understanding that “Hephzibah” was more name than she had shadow. Every day they watched for signs that she was growing into her name, and every day they were disappointed.
“Soon,” they promised each other. “Soon.”
The other was named Avery, because his parents had a sharp and efficient way of looking at the world. They called him “Avery” when they were happy, and “Avery Alexander Grey” when they were mad, and gave him no nicknames. Nicknames were for people whose names didn’t fit them properly, and they had measured him, every inch, before they named him.
“We did well,” they reassured each other. “We did.”
These are our two children: ordinary, average, wildly unique, as all children are. Our story begins on an ordinary, average day, a day which had never happened before, and would never, in all the length and breadth of time, happen again . . .
—From Over the Woodward Wall, by A. Deborah Baker
. . . the Doctrine of Ethos, as described by Pythagoras, held that certain musical instruments and modes could influence the balance between Logos (rational behavior) and Pathos (emotional thought). Later alchemists came to see this as the interaction between the two halves of the human heart, and more, as the balance between language and mathematics: the two methods through which Man has always been able to influence and even command Nature. The Doctrine must thus be viewed as the most dangerous and most desirable of alchemical incarnations. The people who are first able to seize control over the Doctrine shall command all things.
Ladies and gentlemen of the Alchemical Congress, you know what I am capable of. You have seen my masterwork, spoken to the proof of my mastery. I believe I am prepared to incarnate the Doctrine, if you are prepared to let me try.
—Address by Asphodel D. Baker to the American Alchemical Congress, 1901.
Book 0
The Beginning
Medicine rests upon four pillars—philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, and ethics.
—Paracelsus
Time is the substance from which I am made.
—Jorge Luis Borges
GENESIS
Timeline: 11:14 CST, October 31, 1886.
The air is heavy with the crackle of electricity, with the taste of ozone and mercury and the burning tang of alkahest, the universal solvent, which has a nasty tendency to consume everything in its path unless properly contained. Making it is a